I get the effectiveness of that—you're essentially getting free advertising for everything walked past. The article just doesn't seem to describe that. It talks about "hyperreality", confusing customers, making them calm, and placing things in attractive positions.

I feel like that is a separate effect... making you walk past items you might want to get you to buy them vs intentionally confusing you so you forget what you came in for in the first place, which makes you more susceptible the the previous and many other effects.

There's a few good books on the psychology behind this kind of thing in retail by Paco Underhill. Best, I think, is Why We Buy.